Mach was!? (Do something!?) is the title of an old Swabian jazzrock record that pretty much expresses what this blog is about. Its entries talk about the relation between being and becoming, self-actualization and social change. This is how I perceived and questioned reality at each given point in time, not a statement of absolute truth, a call for getting excited, or a reason for feeling criticized personally.
But if you must, you must, of course.

2016-10-22

With fracking, mountain-top removal,
the Athabasca tar sands, millions of acres of burning forests,
hundreds of species disappearing each day, oceanic trash vortices,
nuclear desasters, the sputtering Gulf stream, both polar ice caps
melting at the same time, and sky-rocketing greenhouse gas emissions,
what more does it take people not only to see, but to... act? And
then again, with so many inescapable avalanches like the clathrate
gun triggered, what's the point of activism, other than making a
point of one's will to change the world? What would be the right way
to act, anyway, when it has been for the idea that human activity
could improve on creation that everything became so ugly? And if you
knew how to act appropriately, how would you stand up to an omnicidal
system that - until now, though not for much longer - provides you with everything you need for
survival (and therefore makes you complicit in the destruction)?

So many questions with nobody to answer
them on TV. We're not exactly lied to when the talk is about probable
human extinction until 2100 in case we don't curb emissions, are we?
Five to ten years from now, no matter what we do, matches quite well
with it. The someone who came up with postponing all issues to the next turn of the century was a genius. 2100 is far off into the future. In 2100 none
of us will be around anyway. 2100 sounds so much more comfortable than 2030,
doesn't it?

But it is not like we are going to leave our children and
grandchildren a mess which they would bitterly complain about.
They'll be extinguished, too. No one there to complain, no one there
to take the blame either.

Grief is now with me all the time.
Accepting one's own mortality is quite a different thing from being
faced with the probable near-term eradication of all life. Yet as
both human society and the community of life are unraveling, each day a
little further, a little faster, I function well thanks to having
switched to a saner lifestyle some years ago. I can take my time to
look at this feeling more closely: This grief is not of the
depressing kind. It rather feels like a looking glass with regards to
everything I do or think about. I take joy in simple tasks like
cleaning the floor. I find meaning in suffering, direction within
chaos. All relationships have greatly intensified in the face of
impending collapse.

I breathe in. I breathe out. I am alive
right now, along with most of the species supposedly dying out
somewhen today. I do not deserve another day; yet I receive this gift
and I am grateful for having been given premonition; the chance to
witness, to understand... this – neither in panic, nor in denial,
but consciously.

2016-10-17

So the obituary for the Great Barrier Reef was premature, a failed
attempt at alarmist satire. I find this rather distasteful with
noteworthy real tragedy happening all over the planet. But this is
almost beside the point. The reefs are treminal; the acidification of
the oceans cannot be undone, the melting of ice caps, clathrates, and
permafrost which heat up oceans and atmosphere ever further cannot be
stopped and there is no sign that civilization is about to terminate its damaging activities anytime soon - not before global depletion brings it to a sudden halt.
I ask myself every day if there is still anything to be done, but no,
it's simply time to stop extraction, production, consumption,
manipulation, safeguarding, attempts at global control; not because
that's somehow 'moral' but because there is no use in them any longer,
at least not without a different perspective on life.

Let me repeat what I replied to
someone's comment to the previous posting:

What I didn't emphasize here is the
notion of acting without attachment, and acting from feeling
connected to somebody or something, rather than acting from the
standpoint of “we got to do something”, or “getting it under
control” both of which are coming from fear, like the whole idea of
civilization is. Even from a manipulative point of view, non-action
sometimes is the right thing to do, like when you are caught in a
patch of quicksand where each movement only makes you sink faster.
This is of course counterintuitive to humans, but that's exactly
what's required of us at this moment, I believe.

In a way I do recommend letting go of
activism for a moment, before continuing from an aspiration that runs
deeper than the desire to maintain the status quo. Maybe that takes
rejection of 'doing' altogether, for a short period, - for me it did
- though 'doing' is not a bad thing as such. It has no value in and
of itself. Motivation counts, I guess is what I am trying to say.

2016-10-14

The other day I gave a comment, saying that, with so many tipping points crossed and so many self-reinforcing feedback loops already triggered, there is not much hope mankind would survive the oncoming steep temperature increase. The reply was that the gloom-and-doom preachers just don't know how much CO2 permaculture techniques were able to sequester. There are two points I wish to address.

First of all, with all the criticism I use to direct towards scientism - the belief that science alone can define the nature and contents of reality - we all depend on the results of scientific research in order to evaluate what is about to happen. Apart from the rather anecdotal observations from our own environment scientific data is the foundation for climate discussions. One can interpret it in various ways but the figures as such are already awe-inspiring. With previously relatively conservative scientists like Peter Wadhams now pointing out that we are effectively effed, I think it is not adequate to dismiss the messenger as a doom-and-gloom fearmonger. That goes especially for McPherson whose intention is not spreading fear or defeatism. He expressly encourages people to actually live for the things or the people they love rather than continuing to trying to uphold the zombie obedience to the machine which created the mess in the first place.

Which brings me to my second point. Most of the permaculture scene, like all the rest of society, does not question the origin of the many crises this planet is currently going through. These people are still looking for technical solutions when it was technology - and the mindset of separation and control behind it - that has created those crises. Even if we solved the climate issue - which I doubt because we will not stop wanting to grow, and therefore wanting to produce stuff, and therefore using more energy, and therefore producing more heat - there still is mass unemployment, mass poverty, mass extinction, desertification, dying oceans, diminished forests, resources depletion, overpopulation, criminality, war, nuclear waste, plastic pollution, child labour, inflation, ... you name it. All of this is inherent to the thing that Mumford called the Megamachine, civilization. None of it will go away as long as the notion of separation from, and control over nature prevails, a notion which lies at the very heart of civilization. Civilization HAS to end, or the price we pay is our planet going Venus.
If there is any hope for survival of life on Earth it will not lie in doing, for it was doing that brought us here; hope lies in the collapse of belief in the ideology of control. Hope, though, is part of the collective illusion that prevents us from seeing reality as it is rather than the way we wish it to be. Awakening to the true nature of existence is a task that has to be picked up by each person individually, and it implies surrendering to the possibility of complete annihilation, without fear. Fear of death kills everything.

Grief, yes, we will grief for the loss of loved ones - butterflies, bluebirds, sequoias, relatives, friends, last not least ourselves. And it will be for the love of these that life may find a way.

2016-10-03

"I’m not saying climate change isn’t a factor. But there are causes
that are a lot more tangible. In many places people say, “The rains
stopped coming because we cut down the forests.” I think we need to move
toward making the forests sacred again, and the mangroves, and the
rivers… to see them as sacred beings and not as instruments of human
utility, to be protected because of their greenhouse mitigating
contribution. The attitude of instrumental utilitarianism toward nature
— that is the problem. I’m talking about the idea that the world
outside ourselves is basically a pile of resources whose value is
defined by its utility. If that doesn’t change, nothing will change. And
for that to change, for us to see nature and the material world as
sacred and valuable in its own right, we must connect to the deep part
of ourselves that already knows that. When we make that connection and
feel the hurts of the planet, grief is unavoidable.

From this stance, we still seek to change everything that the CO2
narrative names as dangerous, but for different reasons and with
different eyes." ~~Charles Eisenstein